Wings Over Scotland

Today’s Scottish Sun has a full breakdown of all 59 Scottish seats at Westminster, including bookies’ odds for the favourite in each one. It suggests that nine Labour MPs will have jobs in Scotland a week from today, along with two Tories and a single lonely Lib Dem, with the SNP sweeping the other 47.

We ran the incumbents in those 12 seats through MP Report Card, an independent site which tracks the activity of all the UK’s MPs including expenses claims, outside earnings, how often they turn up to vote or speak in debates and how good they are at replying to constituents’ letters, to gauge their calibre.

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We’re only doing stats posts quarterly now, but since the last one we ran was for the January readership figures that means it’s time for a quick update.

Almost 23,000 extra readers compared to last month and nearly 600,000 more page views? Yeah, we’ll take that. (For perspective, here’s April 2014.)

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You’re probably going to see this misreported in the press quite a lot tomorrow. We thought we should get the whole thing up for the record, to avoid confusion.

We were as stunned as everyone else for a moment. On the Question Time special earlier tonight, Ed Miliband appeared to state that he’d rather not form a government (ie he’d let the Tories in) than do so with the support of the SNP. It sounded like he’d gone dramatically further than he’d ever gone before.

And then he realised what he’d done, and panicked.

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As far as we know, this is the final major set-piece interview that Jim Murphy will have to give before the general election.

As Sally Magnusson of Reporting Scotland makes an admirably dogged but ultimately unsuccessful effort to get a straight answer on just about anything out of Labour’s regional branch manager, we’d swear it was possible to actually measure the delirium of relief on his face as the end draws near and the desperate evasion is over forever.

We gather that for the next week Scottish Labour are just bringing in boardgames.

Positive to the last, Scottish Labour go down punching.

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On the left, Jim Murphy campaigning for the Scottish Labour leadership a few months ago (the backdrop is distinctive, placing the pic sometime last November).

On the right, Jim Murphy on STV tonight.

Don’t tell lies, readers. It drains your soul.

Remember that lovely British solidarity you were told by Labour to vote No for?

You probably need to read this, folks.

It’s come awfully late, but we’ve finally got an answer to a question people have been asking Jim Murphy since last December.

In an interview with the BBC’s Gary Robertson this morning, the Scottish Labour regional manager told listeners that should he win the East Renfrewshire seat in next month’s election, he’d stay in the job for the full five-year term, but would also stand for election as a Holyrood MSP in 2016.

(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 29 April 2015)
.

And that raises more questions than it answers.

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Greg Moodie’s Election Dissection, a compilation of splendid cartoon strips from The National, Bella Caledonia and elsewhere, is available to order now.

Scottish Labour branch office manager Jim Murphy will be appearing on BBC Radio Scotland’s “Call Kaye” programme from 9am today, taking questions from voters as well as presenter Kaye Adams. The phone number to ring in is 0500 92 95 00.

Below are a few posers readers might like to put to Mr Murphy, because he seems to have been adept at avoiding them throughout the campaign. Feel free to reword them.

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A little surprise bonus toon for you, readers.

It’s from an exhibition at the Leiper Fine Art Gallery in West George Street in Glasgow (a firm friend of the Yes movement), featuring political artwork by Wings cartoonists Chris Cairns – creator of the pic above – and Greg Moodie, along with many others, of which you can buy originals to enhance your home.

It runs until 11 May, so you should probably pop along if you’re in the vicinity. We’re not saying we’ll definitely stab you if you don’t, but why take unnecessary risks?

There’s a tactical voting tool on the Telegraph website, which despite a somewhat loaded headline purports to even-handedly advise confused voters on the best course of action to take in their own constituency depending on whether they want to keep Ed Miliband or David Cameron OUT of 10 Downing Street.

We were a bit suspicious when we typed our Bath postcode in and asked to keep Cameron out, because it advised us to vote Labour even though it’s one of the safest Lib Dem seats in the country (with the Tories in 2nd) and Labour got just 3,251 votes in 2010, which is to say they’ve got absolutely no hope here.

And then we tried some Scottish seats, and things got a bit creepy.

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